Google Home

Sonos has announced Alexa support coming (expected the first half of this year). Also the Echo dot has an audio output so as interim step some people will hook a dot to a Play:5 input and get Alexa support that way.

Google is unknown right now. Statements by the new CEO elude to the fact they would like to support Google Home too. I would say if we are talking Alexa support by mid-year then you wouldn't see Google Home support until end of year or early 2018.

http://www.androidcentral.com/new-sonos-ceo-wants-integrations-major-voice-assistants
The article above talks about the leaked memo.
I would be just as interested in not only Google Home support as Google Assistant and Google Now support(I want my phone to be able to control speakers via voice commands)

Voice has its place and is certainly nice. But don't lose focus on controller. Remember my 3D tv was so wonderful too.

Personally, I find very few things that I ask of Alexa. The Echo Dot sits mostly unused. After the novelty wears off, I can only set so many alarms or ask about the weather so often. AI just isn't there yet in terms of having Alexa correctly interpret context. The one thing I could see myself consistently using voice for would be to control the music in the house. Even then, it would only be to use the controller less, not replace it - especially when my hands are busy like in the kitchen. When I am in the living room on my laptop, I would use the app every time. I used the Dot with the line in to a Play 5 which is a really rudimentary solution, and I preferred the controller every time. Sonos has the right approach. If they are going to do it, it has to be as good or better an experience as using the controller.

I use it a lot integrated with my Smartthings andbharmony remote. Turning on off lights. Turning on tv. Turning channel on tv (Alexa turn on espn). Turning on alarm system at night. Etc.

I too am waiting to see if Sonos will integrate with Google home, it already works with chromecast. Seems like a small step to go to google home. I can cast music directly to my sonos using chromecast.

Hope they don't wait too long, I am close to simply swapping out all my Sonos devices with a google home our Chromecast dongle (for my receiver and high quality audio)

Count me in as another user who would really like to see Google Now/Assistant integration. I am an Android user and Google Fiber user and that is why I went to Google Now instead of Alexa. I didn't mind that the speaker was better on the Alexa since I figured on integrating with Sonos. Does anyone have anything other than speculation or rumor regarding when and if this will happen? I'm thinking it is just a matter of time. The sooner the better!

My uninformed guess just from what Sonos has publically said. I would think Alexa intergration would come at least in beta form this spring to early summer. Google - I would think they would be able to spring off Alexa integration to jump start google integration but I'm not sure Google has all the infrastructure in place for robusst integration. I would say earliest possible would be Christmas this year if even then.

We have 3 Play:1 and I have Samsung Smartthings and Google Home and it's frustrating to find I can't really control the Sonos via anything other than the Sonos App. Given that home is a speaker and that it is cheaper than a Play:1 it has crossed my mind to just replace each of them with google home....

Echo integration is coming before google home.

Smartthings supports Sonos and works very well. I have smartthings do lots of voice announcements via Smartthings. You can also setup Smartthings routines to play/pause Sonos and do other things like play favorite playlists. Then you can use Google home integration with Smartthings to trigger those activities.

Choosing your music by talking to your Sonos system is awesome, but it requires a lot more smarts in the Search code. "Play Sting in the bedroom", ok, so what does that mean? Sting Radio (on some services). Sting Top Tracks (on others). A random selection of Sting tracks from my library? Or from the Service? Or a combination? Todays music services vary widely in what they can offer, and my (beta) Alexa/Sonos integration has to special-case each music service to work well. Fortunately as Alexa is US-only (effectively, lots of stuff isn't available in UK/DE yet), and there are only a few major services available to US users. But when it does work it rocks! Right now Spotify offers the best results for voice search, and Amazon the worst (ironically).

I use a work around currently with Google Home and Sonos until there is an official release. I use IFTTT and jishi/node-sonos-http-api. I setup a node.js server and use the Google Assistant and Maker services from IFTTT. It takes a bit of pratice to land the commands the way you want but I can use voice commands to play, pause, stop, mute, next, previous, join speakers, unjoin, ask to play playlist that are saved in sonos. There is much more you can do but you have to build out the applets. Its very responsive from what I have seen so far.

Add my vote for Sonos / Google Home (over Amazon Alexa). As with others, My Echo has found its place as a way to find out when the next Red Sox game is - not much more. I think we would find Google Home much more useful and I would much rather populate our home with Google Home.

I use a work around currently with Google Home and Sonos until there is an official release. I use IFTTT and jishi/node-sonos-http-api. I setup a node.js server and use the Google Assistant and Maker services from IFTTT. It takes a bit of pratice to land the commands the way you want but I can use voice commands to play, pause, stop, mute, next, previous, join speakers, unjoin, ask to play playlist that are saved in sonos. There is much more you can do but you have to build out the applets. Its very responsive from what I have seen so far.

Hello Nifdoow, would you be able to share one of your IFTTT applets? I am trying to do the same but I have been unsuccessful so far. Seeing an example of what you dis would be great and may get me over the line 🙂.

Thanks in advance.

I use a work around currently with Google Home and Sonos until there is an official release. I use IFTTT and jishi/node-sonos-http-api. I setup a node.js server and use the Google Assistant and Maker services from IFTTT. It takes a bit of pratice to land the commands the way you want but I can use voice commands to play, pause, stop, mute, next, previous, join speakers, unjoin, ask to play playlist that are saved in sonos. There is much more you can do but you have to build out the applets. Its very responsive from what I have seen so far.

Hello Nifdoow, would you be able to share one of your IFTTT applets? I am trying to do the same but I have been unsuccessful so far. Seeing an example of what you dis would be great and may get me over the line 🙂.

Thanks in advance.

Hello mate, I got it to work so you can ignore my post. Quite excited about having Sonos integrated with Google Home 🙂

Sorry for the late response. Glad to here is worked out for you. I will still post a brief how to if anyone else wants to try.

I use the google assistant applet "Say a phrase with a text ingredient"

Example google command "tell kitchen sonos to $"

Then I use the make a web request applet.

url example without a log in: http://your ip address:your port/your sonos speaker name/{{TextField}}

url example with a log in: (only use this one if you setup jishi to use a password: warning this method is not secure because the password is being sent in clear text. Anyone sniffing your traffic will be able to see it.)
http://username:password@your ip address:your port/your sonos speaker name/{{TextField}}

Method is: GET

Content Type: application/json

This example will allow you to play, stop, pause, mute, next, previous on one sonos speaker. So far I have commands to join another speaker, increase and decrease volume.

Hope this helps you get started. So many options once you get the hang of it.